Quotes from Franz Kafka

What I write is different from what I say, what I say is different from what I think, what I think is different from what I ought to think and so it goes further into the deepest darkness.

it was like this. the brain could no longer bear the worries and pains that were imposed on it. it said: i'm giving up; but if there is anyone else here who is interested in preserving the whole, let him assume part of my burden and it will be alright for a bit.

I carry the bars within me.

It is only because of their stupidity that they are able to be so sure of themselves.

If you become involved with me, you will be throwing yourself into the abyss.

Life is merely terrible; I feel it as few others do. Often — and in my inmost self perhaps all the time — I doubt whether I am a human being.

Milena - what a rich heavy name, almost too full to be lifted, and in the beginning I didn't like it much, it seemed to me a Greek or Roman gone astray in Bohemia, violated by Czech, cheated of its accent, and yet in colour and form it is marvellously a woman, a woman whom one carries in one's arms out of the world, and out of the fire, I don't know which, and she presses herself willingly and trustingly into your arms.

Each of us has his own way of emerging from the underworld, mine is by writing. That's why the only way I can keep going, if at all, is by writing, not through rest and sleep. I am far more likely to achieve peace of mind through writing than the capacity to write through peace.

All knowledge, the totality of all questions and answers, is contained in the dog.

I like to make use of what I know

the poisonous world flows into my mouth like water into that of a drowning man

One idiot is one idiot. Two idiots are two idiots. Ten thousand idiots are a political party.

I'm on such a dangerous road, Milena. You're standing firmly near a tree, young, beautiful, your eyes subduing with their radiance the suffering world.

There has never been a time in which I have been convinced from within myself that I am alive. You see, I have only such a fugitive awareness of things around me that I always feel they were once real and are now fleeting away. I have a constant longing, my dear sir, to catch a glimpse of things as they may have been before they show themselves to me. I feel that they were calm and beautiful. It must be so, for I often hear people talking about them as though they were.

One must fight to get to the top, especially if one starts at the bottom.

Since I met you, I've felt abandoned without your nearness; your nearness is all I ever dream of, the only thing.

Every word first looks around in every direction before letting itself be written down by me.

I see, these books are probably law books, and it is an essential part of the justice dispensed here that you should be condemned not only in innocence but also in ignorance.

The fact that no one knows where I am is my only happiness. If only I could prolong this forever! It would be far more just than death. I am empty and futile in every corner of my being, even in my unhappiness.

German is my mother tongue and as such more natural to me, but I consider Czech much more affectionate, which is why your letter removes several uncertainties; I see you more clearly, the movements of your body, your hands, so quick, so resolute, it's almost like a meeting.

There sat I, a faded being, under faded leaves.

There is a destination but no way there; what we refer to as way is hesitation.

From a certain point onward there is no longer any turning back.

Anything that has real and lasting value is always a gift from within.